Please help, I'm looking for capture card

[nicolasd]

I need a capture card do the following:

-Capture a movie uncompressed at the biggest resolution possible, much bigger than 320-240.

-Then I will encode the movie in MPEG-1 for playback on a PC monitor. Not on TV.

So which card can capture at the biggest resolution possible so I can then encode it in MPEG-1 for playblack on a monitor? The price is not a problem for me, I want the BEST card.

Please help me if you can, thank you

[MrKGB]

Almost any $50 card will do

I have WinFast TV 2000 Deluxe with remote, FM receiver, stereo sound for just $55, it does all you need.

[gll99]

If you just want to play the clips on your PC monitor you may want to rethink your decision to go with mpeg1.

There are avi codecs (like mpeg4,divx,xvid) (not to mention wmv9 and rm9 which some dislike) which byte for byte will give you better quality (for viewing on a monitor) and likely a smaller file size too.

With most generic cards you can even capture your compressed avi without need to convert after. In time this may be desirable because the conversion to mpeg1 may take several hours and you won't be able to capture at the same time. There are programs that capture directly to mpeg1 (Powervcr II and WINDVR) but many don't like the quality of the ouput file. They have demos so you could try these once you have your card. The cheapest and most compatible cards are those based on the bt848/bt878 and bt879 chipsets similar (but not exclusively) to those made by Avermedia. Of course if price is really no object then there are cards with hardware mpeg support that allow you to capture to mpeg1 or mpeg2 without going through any conversions. Someone else may be able to direct you to a good source since I have never owned one.

[txpharoah]

The ATI All In Wonder cards have tv input in addition to capturing video, and capture perfectly at MPEG1, MPEG2, AVI, and others (if the codecs are there). It does best at MPEG1 and MPEG2, as it is a hardware-assisted MPEG encoder, not just some piece of software doing the work.

You can find an ATI AIW 7500 and 8500 for under $150 right now. I've seen them as low as $119 recently on sale.

And the guide in my signature was made for those cards.

[nicolasd]

it's very important for me that it can capture at "BIG" resolution...I already got an Osprey but it does not allow me to capture at 640x480...are the cards mentionned above can capture at big resolutions?

[txpharoah]

ATI cards can go up to 720x480.
They can capture all sorts of resolutions, and 640x480 is one of them too.

[nicolasd]

ATI cards can go up to 720x480.
They can capture all sorts of resolutions, and 640x480 is one of them too.

ok thanks for the info...do you think it's the best card to capture at such resolution? if the price would not be an issue, and you could buy any card, would you take something else?

[andkiich]

I concur with txpharoah, the ATI All-In-Wonder has done me well and I highly recommend it.

[nicolasd]

any other suggestions?

[Rond66]

For MPEG-1 only, you don't need spend money for overkill.

You should look into ATI cards anyway.
http://www.ati.com/


Building a Digital Video Capture System at:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/video/20010524/index.html


MPEG-1 algorithms force each frame to be the same size by dynamically changing the amount of compression performed on each frame but it also performs additional compression based on the differences between frames. This next step up in video algorithms is called interframe compression. The basic idea is that you can eliminate any redundant information that is common across multiple video frames. Rather than compress each complete frame individually we should only need to keep track of the differences between frames.

You start with a frame, compress it using JPEG. This will be our reference image (called an I frame or Intracoded frame). We then take the next frame, compress it too, and then compare the two. We throw away all the redundant information and only keep track of the differences what we're left with iscalled a P or Predictive coded frame. Repeat for all following frames. This will introduce some errors over time and since these errors are cumulative you have to reset everything every so often by inserting another I frame. You can also improve the algorithm by inserting special frames that compare differences both backward and forward in time. These are called B or Bidirectionally interpolated frames. In terms of size I frames are the largest, P frames are next, and B frames are the smallest. A collection of I, P, and B frames is called a GOP or Group of Pictures..

MPEG-1 was originally designed as a non-isotropic compression algorithm. In other words the amount of processing power required to encode MPEG is much higher than the amount of processing power required to decode that same MPEG stream. Good for playback, bad for capture and compression.

MPEG-1 for video CDs (sometimes called White Book) specified that an MPEG stream had to run at a constant 1.15 Mbps no matter what (for 1X CD-ROMs). In order to maintain this constant bit-rate during playback the amount of compression applied to each frame is constantly changing (not to mention that compressing a video stream from 124 Mbps - down to MPEG-1 rates is a ratio of over 100:1!).

And there are other problems to deal with. As I said earlier, video is very noisy. Even if you point a camera at a blank wall and shoot a handful of frames you would find that virtually every single pixel that makes up each image will change slightly from frame to frame. A pixel that shifts from an RGB value 10,10,10 to 10,10,9 and back again from one frame to the next might not be enough to notice with the naked eye but to a computer those pixel color values are completely different and would count as changes to keep track of.

Now you can pre-process the images or make the algorithms more sophisticated but the tradeoffs involve processing time, image quality, compression ratio, or additional hardware and even then, the results can vary quite a bit depending on the source video you're trying to compress. You might be able to filter out those noise artifacts in a static scene but what happens when the video really is changing significantly from frame to frame? When the camera zooms or pans or moves at all then virtually every single pixel really is changing. Shots of a wheat field blowing in the wind or water flowing or a crackling fire are all difficult to compress. Scene cuts, fades, and dissolves also involve changing every single pixel so any intra-frame compression gains are lost in these situations.

[burnmaster2003]

I have had great experiences and sucess with the following hardware and software;

Adaptec Video OH PCI capture card- The card plugs into any available PCI slot of your computer. The card is a true MPEG2 capture card and costs about $180.00 US dollars.

Snazzi Movie Mill software- The software can collect video at very high resolution settings and is very easy to use. You can use it to capture videos in MPEG1 or MPEG2 formats. Best of all, the software is a free download from the Snazzi web site.

I have used these products to copy VHS home video tapes to DVDs. The DVDs picture quality is better than the VHS tapes. I used Ulead Movie Factory version 1 to burn all my captured videos to DVDs. Hope this helps! I did alot of research before buying the card and have never regretted it. The card also come with all the audio/video cables you need to connect to various video devices.

[lanwater]

I hope I am not asking the obvious, but what are you capturing from? I am tempted to assume vcr. If it is the case and you do have a DV cam just capture using the DV cam as a passthough.

[nicolasd]

I hope I am not asking the obvious, but what are you capturing from? I am tempted to assume vcr. If it is the case and you do have a DV cam just capture using the DV cam as a passthough.

from a DVD player actually

[reubenray]

I already have a Radeon 9500 Pro and was thinking of getting a ATI AIW to use for the capture parts.

Would having 2 graphic cards cause conflicts? Is there a way to isolate them to only do specific items.

[FulciLives]

DVD players have copy protection built into them though the actual DVD must FLAG the hardware to turn it on. So some DVD discs are protection free while others are not. Some capture cards ignore the copy protection and some do not.

My understanding is that one of the better capture cards (which is usually very highly recommend on these forums) will disregard MACROVISION copy protection. However some DVD videos also have another form of protection known as CGMS/A and I am not aware if the capture card I am talking about ignores that as well.

Oh yeah I guess I should tell you what it is hehehehe
The Canopus ADVC-100 or the slightly cheaper DataVideo DAC-100
Both seem to be the same unit although the Canopus is $300 whereas the DataVideo is only $200

These can be ordered from many on-line websites including:
The Electronic Mailbox

Good Luck!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
If you have a DVD-ROM drive you can always rip the DVD to your HDD and then convert it to mpeg1 or whatever format you want. All the software you need is free on the internet. Also, if you only ever intend to play these clips on a computer (or even on a computer but through the TV-out of your video card) then you will most likely find better quality using DivX. DivX looks better than mpeg1 and the encoding speed is MUCH faster as well. Plus with DivX you can keep the resolution at 640x480 and your final file size will probably be not much more than mpeg1 not to mention DivX encoding is faster than mpeg1 encoding.